PTSD: Hanging on to Dark Secrets

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Is a fancy name given to
the unraveling of a person
the skeins of their thoughts
Slither away like snakes
On the mossed floor of their sanity
These people, always over the edge

Balanced like a teetering drunk
On a tightrope
Hanging onto their dark secrets
And singing their dark lyrics
In the forests of dreams
Wanting to say it, to mouth the words
To reveal the secrets for all to hear
But the words skirt away like crawling addicts

Running towards the source
The addiction, the damned drug
The needle with the ketamine.
And then these people die one day
With the secrets clutched to their hearts
A rape, an assault, a punch, a gunshot
A murder, a fire, a broken home
blood and antiseptic, and bleach
To wipe off the stains of blood,
Changing bedsheets to wipe off
The evidences of assaults
The rape didn’t happen
But after 16 years, when they’re
Driving down a highway and hear a scream

Their own come back.
Boyfriends and dark rooms and red lights

And floating outside their bodies
Watching their lives from afar
Somewhere, the buried rapes
Surface like sea-weed and drown the victim.

The world will say it’s a death by drowning

It’s asphyxiation from years of being muffled

Not by water

But by endless screams.

Isha Singh is an English graduate from Miranda House and has worked extensively on trauma studies for her PhD research.

Featured image credit: Joshua Miller/Unsplash